the hospital the night before Hetmeyer's Kopje. I can't tell
what they said, though, nor what was the colour of the lady's pegnoir,
for I am neither Nancy nor Polly nor the cook--nor Rigby."

With a maddened gesture Rigby got to his feet, but a man at his side
pulled him down. "Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the
hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's
own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a
match.

"Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin
precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table.

A chorus of quiet laughter met the Colonel's joke, founded on the
technical fact that the variation in the firing of a gun, due to any
number of causes, though apparently firing under the same conditions,
is carted officially "the error of the day" in Admiralty reports.

"Here the incident closed," as the newspapers say, but Rigby the
tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the
relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined did
not exist.

When Jasmine read the note Al'mah had sent her, a flush stole slowly
over her face, and then faded, leaving a whiteness, behind which was
the emanation, not of fear, but of agitation and of shock.

It meant that Rudyard was dying, and that she must go to him. That she
must go to him? Was that the thought in her mind--that she must go to
him?

If she wished to see him again before he went! That midnight, when he
was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had flung from her room into the
night, and ridden away angrily on his grey horse, not hearing her voice
faintly calling after him. Now, did she want to see him--the last time
before he rode away again forever, on that white horse called Death? A
shudder passed through her.

"Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said, and she did not remember that those were
the pitying, fateful words she used on the day when Ian Stafford dined
with her alone after Rudyard made his bitter protest against the life
they lived. "We have everything--everything," he had said, "and yet--"

Now, however, there was an anguished sob in her voice. With the thought
of seeing him, her fingers tremblingly sought the fine-spun strands of
hair which ever lay a little loose from the wonder of its great coiled
abundance, and then felt her throat, as though to adjust the simple
linen collar she wore, making exquisite contrast to the soft simp